Basic trade skills, pays you for earning a GED, most of the centres are rual so it's hard to fall into 'temptation'. Overall a great program.
Then again I have been incredible throughout my life, winning the birth lottery pretty big and probably can't hope to truly understand the psychology and desires of much of my own very diverse country. Maybe I am wrong. Hopefully I am wrong. After all I can only really see this world through my own biased bullshit perspective.
However, many of them are incredibly close to their family or friends- after all, what's the point of life if you don't have anything you love in yours? I was a bit fortunate that my family had effectively written me off as a failure, which left me little guilt to feel when I left.
Then, my entire life turned around. In the span of 14 months, I go from unemployed, to auto parts delivery, to paid-for-shit web developer, to absolutely amazing webdev/product development job. All without college, and thusly, with no debt.
I got stupendously lucky, once the bad luck ran out. But I don't imagine as many had the pure hopelessness that I had before, where you have no moral support from friends/family, and no hope for work, which gives you no reason to not leave.
Have you ever even been to a poor neighborhood, in your life? I've lived there. Everyone I knew growing up lived there. Poverty doesn't work that way. Blowing your money on booze and drugs and gold chains and other luxuries? Christ, you barely have enough money for food, let alone all of that. I don't mean "barely enough money to buy food after all of the other things", I mean that tonight you're having a can of chicken noodle soup, just like the last three nights in a row, so that on Friday you can go to McDonalds for two or three items off the dollar menu as a treat. The people you're talking about are dozens of steps above the people I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the people for whom if they made even $10k a year they'd be some of the happiest people on earth. There are millions of them, in America. And Christ, no shame in asking for government handouts? WHAT government handouts? Are you at all, even one iota, familiar with the welfare system of the United States? It's incredibly hard to get much of anything beyond for a few months unless you have some kind of job. A few years if you're a pregnant woman. And when you're jobless for this many years, well, too bad.
I'm sorry, but you couldn't possibly know less about what you're talking about. Your statement smacks of overt racism, and if you seriously claim "Well hey white people get gold chains too", I just hope you realize that you're not fooling a soul.
I wish I could point you to full text articles, but they're all behind paywalls. Try googling 'joblessness black youth depression' to read some relevant abstracts.
You should recall that less than a century ago people felt they were entitled to own other people, perhaps you mean that as a whole our society has grown averse to letting people starve in ghettos.
"The reason poor people remain poor is because they don't have access to capital."
Sorry, I couldn't quickly rediscover the author / researcher who made this statement.
Everything costs more when you're poor and it's harder to get ahead when you're underwater. Having been "poor" (medical debt), I heartedly concur.
I learn all sorts of new things listening to Mind Over Matters on keep.org every weekend.
I don't think there are many loan products currently that could fill that kind of need, so it could be an open opportunity.
I find that hard to believe.
Combine that with not knowing where to look or who to ask when it comes to getting remote programming work, you don't really have a lot in the way of recourse.
Originally, I was born in Fresno, CA. We didn't have the most healthy job rate when times were good, let alone once the recession hit. I spent five years looking for a job- and didn't find one until I got the help of a friend online in Claremore, Oklahoma, who let me move in. In a month I was working at an auto parts store, even though I knew jack shit about cars. I was making enough that I could've survived with that job. I'd be poor, I couldn't go to college, but I could survive.
I was lucky enough that I had a nice computer I'd gotten from when there was a windfall in the family, and I'd taught myself to program enough Python and Django to get a webdev job remotely. But even if I hadn't, I could've survived on this. Getting me out there cost a grand total of perhaps ~$1500, at most, and that'd get me my first month's rent. Tack on another $1000 and I'd have 3 months rent total and enough leftover to get a cheap bed.
Is this economically feasible? Would it even provide good economic value? People are needed in these rural areas, but I just don't know if it'd provide enough economic reward to actually be worth it to the country.